10 Religious Paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel the Elder is remembered first as the great painter of peasants, of hunters in the snow and dancing…
Christian art is the visual tradition of the Christian faith, spanning nearly two thousand years, from the frescoes of the catacombs and the golden mosaics of Byzantium to the masterpieces of the Renaissance and Baroque and the devotional images of today. The guides below trace that story across its greatest works.
The life of Christ: the Nativity, Baptism, Sermon on the Mount, Last Supper, Crucifixion and Resurrection, plus Jesus walking on water, the Wedding at Cana, Doubting Thomas and the Good Shepherd.
Scripture and the Old Testament: the most famous biblical paintings and scenes such as David and Goliath.
By era and style: medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and modern Christian painting.
The Virgin, saints and angels: Virgin Mary paintings, the Black Madonna, female saints in art and the archangels.
Devotion and the masters: from the Sacred Heart to Raphael’s Madonnas and Giotto. Browse it all in our galleries.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder is remembered first as the great painter of peasants, of hunters in the snow and dancing…
The Hail Mary prayer in English and Latin, its meaning, and the paintings that show it line by line, from Fra Angelico and Simone Martini to Raphael and Caravaggio.
Adam and Eve paintings through art history, from Durer and Cranach to Titian, Rubens, Hans Baldung and Gustav Klimt, with the meaning of the apple, the serpent and the fig leaf.
Under his wings: Psalm 91 through Christian art, from Christ treading the beasts at Ravenna to the guardian angels of Cortona and Verrocchio.
The peace prayer of St Francis, make me an instrument of your peace, through Christian art. Its true origin, the saint behind it, and masterpieces by Giotto, Bellini, Zurbaran, Caravaggio and El Greco.
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Follow Psalm 51 and the penitent King David through Christian art, from the Stuttgart Psalter and Books of Hours to Honthorst, de Grebber and Guercino.
The Lord is my shepherd has shaped Christian art for eighteen centuries. Follow Psalm 23 from the Roman catacombs to Ravenna, the medieval psalters, and the great devotional painters.
Alonso Cano paintings carry the silvery hush of Granada and the quiet devotion that earned him the nickname of the Spanish Michelangelo.
Gerard David paintings close the great age of Bruges. Step into the silvery Madonnas and altarpieces of the last early Netherlandish master.
Hans Baldung paintings carry the Dürer line into a stranger, more visionary world. Step inside the altarpieces of the German Renaissance master of Strasbourg.